Vernon Roger Alden (April 7, 1923 – June 22, 2020) was an American scholar, businessman, philanthropist and the 15th president of

Ohio University Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...

. After graduating from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

, he stayed at the business school as an associate dean. After his term as president at Ohio University, he worked at the

Boston Company Mellon Financial Corporation was an investment firm which was once one of the world's largest money management firms. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it was in the business of institutional and high-net-worth individual asset management, incl ...

as chairman for several years.

Early life

Alden was born in April 1923 in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the son of Hildur Pauline (Johnson) and Arvid W. Alden, a Protestant minister. As a young boy, he attended public school in Illinois and Rhode Island. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Alden attended the Navy Officers Japanese Language School in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

, before serving on the aircraft carrier . Alden received a degree in English literature at

and an MBA from

Work at Ohio University

Alden was 38 years old when he came to Ohio University from his position as the associate dean of the

. During his time as president, the enrollment and faculty on the Athens Campus doubled and enrollment in the university’s five branch campuses nearly tripled. During his presidency, Alden oversaw expansion of the campus area through urban renewal. The size of Athens’ campus increased by more than 750 acres. The development of South Green, the completion of West Green, and the construction of a new regional airport all happened during his presidency. His efforts in urban renewal exceeded developing the university and overflowed to improving economic growth in southeastern Ohio. He rerouted the flood-prone

Hocking River The Hocking River (formerly the Hockhocking River) is a right tributary of the Ohio River in southeastern Ohio in the United States. The Hocking flows mostly on the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau, but its headwaters are in a glaciated region. ...

, which annually drowned the university every spring, constructed the Appalachian Highway Network to provide easier access to Athens for visitors, and built six regional branches of Ohio University in both eastern and southern Ohio. Alden was an advocate for the expansion of research and for new academic programs. He led the development of programs such as the Ohio Fellows Program, the Cutler Program of Individualized Studies, the Honors College, and the Black Studies Institute. In addition to academic programs, Alden implemented university remissions for university employees and their families, sabbatical leaves, and the

Ohio University Press Ohio University Press (OUP), founded in 1947, is the oldest and largest scholarly press in the state of Ohio. It is a department of Ohio University that publishes under its own name and the imprint Swallow Press. History The press publishes ap ...

. Increased rights for faculty and students were evidenced by a Faculty Senate and Student-Faculty Mediation Board. Vernon attracted President

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

to the Athens campus to announce the Great Society Program in May 1964. In 1965, Alden was the subject of a ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'' Magazine feature showcasing his accomplishments as well as the challenges facing academic administrations in the wake of

open admissions Open admissions, or open enrollment, is a type of unselective and noncompetitive college admissions process in the United States in which the only criterion for entrance is a high school diploma or a certificate of attendance or General Education ...

policies. Upon his retirement from Ohio University the Board of Trustees dedicated the new library in his name, the Vernon Roger Alden Library. Alden left the University in 1969.

Professional achievements

Alden became Chairman of the

and the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company in 1969. During his tenure, to 1978, the company quadrupled its assets. Alden transformed the company from a somewhat local financial company into an international organization and attracted to its board of directors incredibly successful executives including the chief executive officers of

Armco Steel AK Steel Holdings Corporation was a steelmaking company headquartered in West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio. The company, whose name was derived from the initials of Armco, its predecessor company, and Kawasaki Steel Corporation, was a ...

, TransWorld Airlines, Continental Oil,

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...

in the United Kingdom, the Dole Company in Hawaii and Lee Iacocca, the then president of

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

. Alden and his associates developed new branches of the Boston Company including the

Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by rev ...

, the Financial Strategies Group, Institutional Investors, Rinfret-Boston Economic Advisory Services, and an oil and gas investment subsidiary in Texas. These new entities allowed the Boston Company to expand outside of Massachusetts to acquire investment counseling firms across the United States. By the end of the 1970s the

became the United States’ 15th largest investment-management firm. Alden was fascinated by organizations that were hired by incredibly wealthy families like the Rockefellers and the Fords to manage their assets. He recognized that similar assistance was needed by families less wealthy. He took this idea and transformed it into the Financial Strategies Group, an organization created to evaluate the assets of less wealthy families, offer advice on estate planning, manage resources, and enable them to invest. Among his first clients were John Glenn and George Webster.

Influence in Japan

He became president of the Japan Society of Boston in 1969 and obtained a five-year grant from the US-Japan Friendship Commission. The grant provided the company with the opportunity to hire an Executive Director and to expand the company by increasing membership to more than 2,000 with 150 additional corporate members. Alden has been a member of the Harvard Program on US-Japan Relations, the Massachusetts-Hokkaido Sister State Committee, the Newport-Shimoda Black Ships Festival, and the Boston-Kyoto Sister City Foundation.

Personal

Alden and his wife Marion had four children, Robert, Anne, James and David. His wife predeceased him. He died in June 2020 at the age of 97.Vernon Roger Alden death notice
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References